Charge-Redistribution-Enhanced Nanocrystalline Ru@IrOx Electrocatalysts for Oxygen Evolution in Acidic Media

By Jieqiong Shan, Chunxia Guo, Yihan Zhu, Shuangming Chen, Li Song, M. Jaroniec, Yao Zheng, S. Qiao. Chem, 2019

434 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Summary Achieving high activity and long-term stability is a major challenge in the design of catalysts. In particular, the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in acidic media, which plays a key role in proton exchange membrane electrolyzers for fast hydrogen fuel generation, seriously suffers from rapid degradation of catalysts as a result of the harsh acidic and oxidative conditions. Here, we report a rational design strategy for the fabrication of a heterostructured OER electrocatalyst (Ru@IrOx) that has unique physicochemical properties and in which a strong charge redistribution exists between a highly strained ruthenium core and a partially oxidized iridium shell across the metal-metal oxide heterojunction. The increased valence of the iridium shell and the decreased valence of the ruthenium core activate a synergistic electronic and structural interaction, which results in the enhanced activity and stability of the catalyst compared with the majority of the state-of-the-art ruthenium- and iridium-based materials.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/87a3d020b742a51119508da7f48b9b91d6cc03d0